Inspirational: Chairman Jeff Mostyn on AFC Bournemouth. Soccer’s Lazarus.

Whether its Japan’s Brave Blossoms beating the mighty Springboks or tiny Iceland trumping England at soccer, sport reminds us to never take things for granted. But even by those standards, the story of English football club AFC Bournemouth is incredible. On the verge of disappearing into eternal anonymity just eight years ago, the 180 000 population seaside town’s local club is now establishing itself in the most elite football league on earth. Most of the plaudits have been attracted by the team’s brilliant young manager Eddie Howe who was 32 when he took charge in 2009. But equally important to the fairytale is chairman Jeff Mostyn, who bought his hometown club on emotion and stayed to fight after discovering a mountain of debt. I recently got the opportunity to interview Mostyn and what followed was an inspirational story of business unusual. No exaggeration to call this the sporting world’s equivalent of the biblical raised-from-the-dead Lazarus. And watch out for the South African angle too. Hint: Vitality is Discovery’s UK business. – Alec Hogg  

It’s been a good week Jeff Mostyn – winning again on the weekend and the chance to once more show off your new signing, England international player Jack Wilshere – a wonderful recruit for anyone, but a dream for AFC Bournemouth?

It’s a tribute to how Jack sees his football progression to join us, albeit for one season. But he’s joining a football club that we think plays very much in the same style as his parent club Arsenal.

Were you able to bring some of your business skills to bear in the negotiations?

I would like to think those primarily involved did do. Our chief executive, Neil Blake was very influential, but when it came down to the final decision with Jack, it was more of the skills of our manager, Eddie Howe and Jack’s best friend, Benik Afobe. Benik played with Jack since they were both boys at Arsenal. They are literally best friends. Benik is godfather to Jack’s child and I think that was very instrumental in Jack coming to a club where he knew he was going to get the right kind of coaching and support on the pitch, but of equal importance to him and his partner, the right kind of support off the pitch as well. That was, I think, how we managed to get that deal over the line in the face of some serious opposition from other premier league clubs and clubs throughout Europe.

Your dream perhaps now to find the wherewithal to keep him?

We operate, as we always have done at the football club, with a sort of a baby steps mentality. So the one step at a time having secured him for the season was the first step. Obviously subject to how Jack wants to progress his career, we’d like to think that if we retain our position in the Premier League and the position or his tenure at Arsenal is still in doubt, we may have an opportunity. But right now it would probably be stretching everybody’s wildest imagination for us to think that would happen. He’s very much Arsenal owned and Arsene Wenger has made it quite clear he’s an integral part of Arsenal’s future.

Wilshere already played more minutes for Bournemouth (246) than he has for Arsenal since May 2015. Loan is already a success.

— Abhinav (@AbhinavMMA) October 2, 2016

But you do stretch imaginations. The extraordinary story of AFC Bournemouth is known all over the world. Last season, your first in the Premier League in England, did you achieve what you aimed for?

Yes, we did as a football club. We never use the word ‘survival’ because for us it’s a negative word and I think if you just set out to survive, i.e. finish outside of the relegation zone, you inevitably tread water and get sucked into the bottom three. We have a positive mentality and we always believe that we could retain our position, which is probably the same thing as survival at the end of the day, but it has more positive connotations. We didn’t set any particular goal for the players other than retaining our position. As Eddie Howe has always maintained, he wants to try to improve year on year, not only with the players that we have, but in integrating new players into the squad. What we achieved last year, in my humble opinion, was an even greater achievement than actually getting to the Premier League in the first place.

Why?

The quality of the opposition. You only realise when you’re there the gulf between the Football League Championship and the Premier League. You’re playing against some of the world’s elite players, some of the world’s greatest clubs in the world’s greatest competition. The learning curve is probably equivalent to the meteoric rise we had from Division Two to the Premier League. It was like a Saturn V rocket for the boys to experience playing in front of up to 76 000 people at Old Trafford – and a common average of 40 000/50 000 plus every week – was a huge learning curve for them. I think as a consequence of that, given the quality of the opposition, the huge budgets we were competing with, it was a greater achievement than actually getting here.

Now that you’re in the Premier League and pretty settled after the first season, what are your expectations for 2016/2017?

Certainly, our ambition is to once again retain our position. We realise and you look at the track record of accomplishment of clubs in the Premier League, the longer that you retain your position, the more financially stable you become, the more you can attract regular Premier League players. Many players are reluctant to go to newly promoted sides because there’s always this fear of relegation and we know it’s a huge challenge to retain your place. I think if you follow like the Stoke City example – not a good example at the moment because they’re languishing at the foot of the table but I have every confidence that they’ll make progress from there, just to see some progresses.

Southampton, our near neighbours, are another very good example of a team that have now been in the Premier League for four seasons and they’re firmly established. It’s at that stage that you can kick on with your ambitions. You can look as a member of the board at becoming what your investment is likely to be in the future, as opposed to being slightly on the back foot of not wanting to leap into the fire because of the fear that you may be relegated. Therefore, our ambition is to kick on from where we were last year.

We’d like to improve upon our 16^th position on the table last year and I think the acquisitions that we’ve made, we certainly feel we have a stronger squad and by freshening up the squad. It’s also part of this philosophy that we’ll continue to play football the way we always do – a proper thoroughbred passing game. The downside is that in your second season people know what you are, they know how you’re going to set up. It’s only when you refresh the team that you add a little bit of the unknown because people would not have competed against us with the same playing squad as we have this year.

Going back to the beginning of the story, was there a master plan put into place in the boardroom or did things just happen day-by-day?

In the very early days, we lived hand-to-mouth. I bought the football club in 2006 and within 12 or 18 months, regrettably I had to put the football club into administration. There was a lot of non-disclosed debt. We had close to £4-million worth of debt that at the time of the purchase, I was oblivious to. Having bought the football club with my heart rather than my head that didn’t actually come as a shock.

I think it was one of those things where it was like a Victor Kiam of Remington moment. I walked into the football club, liked it, so I bought it and only afterward realised that it was one hell of a mess. I sort of joked over many years that we could hardly afford a first class stamp, so planning wasn’t part of our daily routine. The board meetings were very much of the ilk of ‘we need £100 000’ and instead of date of next meeting it was date of next cheque that was really the only topic on the agenda. It was literally from hand to mouth. We most certainly ever planned. It was a fantasy rather than a dream come true. Fantasies very seldom come true, especially thinking one one day this football club would play in the greatest football league on earth, the English Premier League.

Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe said speculation linking him with the England job is no distraction for his Cherries. https://t.co/VhkeOqJv4z

— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) October 2, 2016

Even people from outside football would love to know what they can learn from your story….

What you can learn is to remain 100 percent positive even in the face of complete and utter adversity. That’s what we did. We developed something that is still around the football club today: a siege mentality. Having put the football club into administration (Feb 2008) we suffered a 10-point deficit and at the end of that season we were relegated on the last day of the season into League Division 2. Because it was the club’s second administration in 10 years we suffered a further 17-point deficit in the next season so started the season minus 17 points. With any hope of surviving you had to have a positive mental attitude.

You can imagine how many games it would take to actually get out of the bottom three or else to the bottom place when you’re languishing there before a ball is kicked with minus 17 points. If there was any form of negativity around the football club, then we would have failed at the first hurdle.

Collectively we decided we had to give 100 percent. We had to be committed to try to save the football club. We knew that if we were relegated again we wouldn’t have been relegated just one step into the football conference because they had a zero tolerance in respect of debt and we know that a lot of the conference clubs are investing heavily. We would have probably finished seven or eight leagues down the football pyramid and probably would have struggled to ever get back to football league status.

With that at stake, we collectively decided to just throw the kitchen sink at it, throw caution to the wind. And adopt the siege mentality. Everything mattered. No matter whether you were in the dressing room upstairs or the dressing room downstairs – we were going to act as one. There’s some irony that today our strap line is ‘Together anything is possible’. Certainly in those days together anything turned out to be possible when the rest of the football world had written us off.

The thing that brought the siege mentality was that in addition to those minus 17 points we had a transfer embargo for 18 months. So we were unable to add to the squad and, therefore, had to field those who were fit enough to play. That lasted 18 months.

Under Eddie’s tutelage we managed to overcome the darkest days at the football club, certainly from my tenure, to achieve what was a remarkable achievement of remaining in the second division. Some of our local reporters and some of our supporters have said that was probably a greater achievement than later getting to the Premier League. I wouldn’t argue with that. My only difference is the higher up the food chain you get, the more difficult it is to achieve success because of the quality of your opponents. But I think they’re probably absolutely right. Without that siege mentality, you and I would not be having this conversation today.

What was the impact on the local community of this incredible escape act?

When I first arrived at the football club, you very seldom saw a Bournemouth shirt in town; everybody was a Premier League club supporter. People will still support another Premier League club by birthright, but today when you walk in Bournemouth, all you see are Bournemouth shirts among supporters. Again, when I arrived at the football club, the average attendance was 2 500. Today you can’t buy a ticket for any game for the remainder of the season; you can’t buy any hospitality at the football club for any game right through to the end of May. I think that’s indicative of the support that we now have.

We’ve converted so many people, not only in Bournemouth, but globally. We have an immense amount of pride, but we’re still a community club. Our roots are still in the community. That’s where our heart lies. We’re a Premier League Football club by status, but our mentality is still to work very closely with our schools, our supporter groups and our sponsors. We have a very, very strong family and we provide a very strong family environment for people to enjoy their football.

Talking about sponsors, how has the partnership with Vitality helped in fulfilling your ambitions?

Vitality is a wonderful company. They have a huge reputation and the very fact that we have a relationship with Vitality, certainly enhanced our own brand and the respect that we had from business people not only nationally but internationally as well. We have the most incredible relationship with Neville (Koopowitz), the chief executive and Courtney (Mangone), Chris and Alex, their representatives and agents. We work closely with Vitality in Bournemouth. The club’s representatives and I have been to talk to their salesforce to give motivational presentations. They are very much part of our family. It gives me immense pride when I arrive at the football club in the morning and look above the stadium to see the Vitality name glowing and representing the football club around the world because our television games now are global as opposed to just being domestic.

I think they’ve done wonders for us and the brand is so significant in what we do in the community. The health care brand of Vitality represents everything that we do and everything that I represent. I’m a patron of Dorset Cancer Care; I’m a UK ambassador for Prostate Cancer UK. We talk to 3 000 children a week in schools about the pitfalls of anti-social behaviour, of drug abuse, of alcohol abuse and of health care and warning against things like internet grooming. Living a healthy lifestyle is very much part of our day-to-day vocabulary in the community. To be supported side by side by Vitality just gives the football club the incredible status that without them we probably would not enjoy.

You various interests outside of football – how do you keep a balance in life?

I need the answer to that question myself. I’m the world’s worst delegator and I take everything on-board myself. This is a seven-day a week job for me, certainly six days minimum, because I go to every game, home and away throughout the season. I do find it very, very difficult to have a separate private life, which is very rare from my sort of business. I am a workaholic: I think to be involved in a football club, you have to be a workaholic.

My parents certainly taught me to have a good work ethic, to say please and thank you, and respect everybody that you work with. I like to feel that’s something I portray at the football club, something I share with other people. I am immensely proud to be chairman of this incredible football club. Also to be one of only three people that have been chairman of the same football club in all four divisions of the professional pyramid. That also fills me with great pride. It means that people have confidence in me. And I like to feel that I possess one of God’s greatest gifts – a lot of enthusiasm.

You’ve said Bournemouth has achieved the impossible. Do you think it’s repeatable?

I think that we are role models to many football clubs. In my various roles with the Football Association in the various committees I sit on, people from the football league often say to me what AFC Bournmouth has achieved is a benchmark of what we would like to achieve. The the fact that we’ve achieved it in the modern era with the huge sums of money available to relegated clubs through parachute payments gives everybody hope. That also fills us with great pride here to feel that as a football club who were languishing at the bottom of the English professional pyramid only seven years ago that we’re now seen as a role model of how to run the business. What we’ve achieved in the face of adversity gives every hope that they can emulate what we have done.

I think Burton Albion is a very good example. Not long ago they were in the second division, and indeed, they’re very dear friends of ours. We’re not quite twinned with them, but if you could twin with another football club we would probably be twinned with Burton Albion. We celebrated our promotion from the second division at their stadium and we have an amazing relationship with the football club. I have a very close working relationship with the chairman, Ben Robinson. They have started their first ever season in the Championship in very respectable fashion. So I think that what we’ve achieved is a great example to others; not only in football but also in sport generally, I think that people love the underdog story. When you have a respectful business that is run the right way and the players play the right type of football, I think that people start to sit up to listen and respect the football club for what it does off the pitch in the community as well as the achievements on the pitch.

Jeff, what is your next dream? You would have achieved the fantasy…… presumably, you’re looking even higher.

Well, you have to keep looking up at just how far the football club can go. I think that one of our dreams would be to have a stadium that is fit for Premier League purpose. We have the smallest stadium in Premier League history with only 11 300 at its capacity. We’re working on a programme to try to buy the stadium. Unfortunately, our success has also elevated the price that our current landlords want for the property. My argument is that the property has the same value irrespective of what league it’s in.

You can just afford to probably pay more or ask for more the higher up the food chain, but because you’re successful in business. If you own a house, whether it be in Cape Town or Johannesburg or in Bournemouth, the property has a value irrespective of how successful you are as a business. We’re trying to overcome that. Failing that we will continue to try to look for other properties or land where we can build a stadium our supporters deserve.

My goal would be to leave a legacy of a successful football club that retains its position as a regular member of the world’s greatest football league but also to provide a facility where maybe up to 20 000 people can come to enjoy and watch the team that some have supported for 30 to 50 years.

Jeff Mostyn is the Chairman of AFC Bournemouth.